Why Jesus Is Essential For Optimal Spiritual, Physical, And Psychological Health

Spiritual health can best be understood as the state of having good free will, resulting in a person willfully and volitionally choosing to have contentment, discipline, and integrity.

When the spirit fuels the mind, you can make good or bad choices about how you handle your thoughts, emotions, and willpower.

When the spirit fuels the body, you can make good or bad choices about what you do with your body in the physical world.

Without the spirit, it’s just mind and body, only a reactive experience without much progress toward achieving goodness: the mind would experience random influxes of thoughts/emotions without much willpower to handle unhealthy use of thoughts/emotions/willpower (because without the spirit, or without proper use of the spirit, there is no drive for choosing good over bad). And the body would react to whatever stimuli it’s presented with, without much conscious thought about what is good for it. The mind and body can still work together, because the mind still has some willpower on its own, because of its connection to the body’s neural programming for it, but without the spirit, the willpower over its thoughts/emotions will be aimless, not making choices on its own will.

For example: if the body is running away from a bear, and the mind suddenly feels lazy, it can willpower itself to stop feeling lazy so that the body can keep running. But the motive is not for making good choices—it would be because it just simply wants to avoid danger of the bear. This is more of a reaction rather than a conscious choice based on good versus bad on a moral level.

The mind and body can work together without much spiritual influence, but there are limits: if you are hungry or in pain, your mind can choose to ignore it and keep pressing on. But after a certain point, it will run out of energy to keep going until the hunger or pain is addressed. But when you have the spirit, you can fuel more energy into the mind so that it can keep focusing despite the physical pains of the body, and you can fuel more energy for the body to keep moving despite the mind’s emotional or mental unwillingness. This is why: the spirit—as mentioned—is energy for having good free will. When you are struggling to get your mind to achieve peace, despite all your mental willpower, the spirit is what fuels the energy for you to choose on your own free will, the thoughts to think about things that you know bring goodness for yourself, as well as the emotions for you to feel happiness about the goodness you are trying to achieve. And finally, the spirit also fuels your willpower so that you can choose to sustain such a state of goodness.

The body can also help too—by nourishing the body and your brain gets the chemicals it needs to think straight and get the mind to experience peace. But again—both the mind and body can only go so far. Nourishing the body only enables the mind to control its thoughts/emotions/willpower in a default state—for achieving simple pleasure, calmness, being logical, etc. But to reflect on deeper things about true goodness, it needs discipline fueled by the spirit, since deeper discernment and value for goodness is fueled by the spirit—energy outside the physical (also….think of what happens if you were to clone yourself: that clone will share the same physical setup, and the same mental framework as you because it also shares your brain and all your memories. Thus, the clone will look like you physically, and its personality will be the same as well, because it shares the same mind. But…you will only experience consciousness thru your own body—when the clone leaves the room and flies to the moon, you will not experience consciousness in your country and on the moon at the same time. Why? Because you have your own spiritual energy to make your soul experience consciousness, and that clone has its own spiritual energy to fuel its conscious experience).

So the mind, body, and spirit are all interconnected. And the spirit is real and essential for a wholesomely good conscious experience. Thus, it is essential that we have Jesus fueling our spirits, so that we can follow His guidance and filled with His wisdom to address our health needs in all other areas of our lives.

Of course, we can learn how to have goodness without being in a relationship with Christ or even have a spiritual/religious background at all. However, if we truly want to be free from any hidden blindspots or unhealthy tendencies that threaten our overall well-being, we have to be aware that our own perception of the world will always be vulnerable to subjectivity and biases, based on how we are physically and psychologically wired based on how we have been shaped by nature and our experiences. And because other people are also vulnerable to being subjective and biased by their own perceptual, psychological wiring and experiences, it's never enough to rely on ourselves and other people to be truly objective with who we are and how things should be. Rather, we must trust in God, who designed our personalities and gave us the ability to perceive and experience the world. Only He can help us be truly objective with how we are seeing ourselves, others, the world He created for us, and what it truly means to achieve goodness in all aspects of life.

God nourishes our spirits with fruits of His Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23). This means there is never a time when we should refrain from partaking any of these fruits, because our spirits will always need them for optimal well-being. When we embrace these fruits that God gave us, not only will we experience them, but we will also be driven to help others experience them as well; thus, by the fruits of one's works can we tell if someone's spirit is truly being influenced by God (Matthew 7:16). Only when our spirits are influenced by God can we be influenced to make good choices and have good free will.

Thus, optimal personal development will always be incomplete if we neglect the role of our spiritual health when submitted to Christ. Once we are fully committed to Him, our spirits will be filled with the fruits that His Spirit endows us with, so that our path to personal development will truly be achieved at its most optimal level, free from any hidden imbalances in our personalities. We can thus have personalities that are well-equipped to handle our lives properly, including any issues we may encounter with our physical health, because only God knows our personalities, spirits, and bodies perfectly to guide us to true and complete well-being. Of course, that's not to say that any impairments in our physical, psychological, or spiritual status are always signs of a disconnected or unhealthy relationship with Jesus. Sometimes, struggling with any form of health is due to the broken nature of this world rather than our own struggle to follow Christ. When it comes to any form of health issue, it is important to trust in God's perfect will to bring heaven on earth, so that we remember that He is never in favor of keeping us under physical, psychological, or spiritual infirmities. That way, we can maintain our trust in His guidance, so that we persevere through any struggles and ultimately bring Him glory for any success and growth we experience.

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Helpful Sources:

The Pursuit of Self-Realization | Pastor Tony Chung | Jubilee Seoul - YouTube - Jubilee Church sermon

The Pursuit Of Health | Sam Lopez | Hillsong California - YouTube - Hillsong Church Sermon

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Additional Points About Spiritual Health-

To be physically healthy: take care of your body, don't get sick, and ensure you can physically function to address your needs.

To be mentally/psychologically healthy: address your mental and emotional needs to become the wholesome version of your personality.

To be spiritually healthy: use your free will for good by placing your faith in a living force outside yourself.

For spiritual health, there is emphasis on seeking something outside of the physical and psychological. Unlike mental health, this isn't about connecting more with the self. Rather, it's about connecting with someone outside yourself, to achieve enlightenment that is from a supreme, divine force outside yourself. It can't just be about adopting a certain lifestyle just to feel more fulfilled-- that would just be addressing your mental health, not spiritual. If you're just following some moral philosophy, or some meditative/mindfulness practices like Buddhism, or any philosophy that does not involve an interaction with the divine, you're feeding your mental/psychological side, not the spiritual. Why? Because when you do these things, you're only interacting with your own mind again. Even serving other people and doing morally upright things is missing the point-- serving people/being moral are excellent, but that's just addressing your own mental health again. Because part of what it needed for good mental/psych health is to have good relationships with other people and to have good integrity (based on good you do to other). But spiritual health is about a relationship with the transcendent and divine, the integrity that comes from this surpasses the simplistic understanding of integrity that the human mind is familiar with. Spiritual health therefore requires you to go directly to that transcendental force and surrender to it. So to truly surrender and make that connection, you must abandon the mindset of "what's in it for me" when addressing spiritual health. True spiritual enlightenment and divine connection is about serving outside yourself, it can only be done by surrendering your natural mindset to the supernatural; if there is no surrender to the supernatural, you're just going to be addressing your natural mental health needs again. It no longer "seeing is believing"-- that is only helpful for addressing your physical/mental health. But for spiritual health, it's about "believing is seeing." You must have faith in order to make any progress in achieving a transcendent connection and enlightenment. How to know if you are placing your faith in the right spirit, or if you're going to "get it right" at all when you do? Again....there is real meaning behind the truth that Jesus is the only Way. He is God and was in human form. He therefore serves as the bridge between the natural and supernatural, between man and God. God is the holiest of holies, the most supreme and divine force. He is therefore far beyond our understanding and so much higher than we are. There is no way we can ever connect with such a supreme and pure Spirit unless we have connected with Christ, who has already offered us the invitation to be in connection with Him. Connect with Christ, and you connect with God, you connect with His Holy Spirit. This is essential when you open your mind to the supernatural, because there are all sorts of spirits out there who can mislead when you seek the supernatural. Only God can ensure that your spirit is protected from deception, so when you open your mind to the supernatural for a spiritual connection, you must ensure you are directly calling out to God; otherwise you risk develop the connection with the wrong spirit.

One cannot achieve true spiritual enlightenment unless one is directly in connection with the right spirit-- God is the only Spirit that can truly give you the spiritual health you need. Any openness to other spirits or other routes of doing this will only mislead you and result in delusion. There's a difference between spiritual awareness and delusion-- the former can only be achieved when you connect with God; the latter is when you adopt any other route, because our natural minds are not made for the supernatural and it is thus easy to get fooled when we try and navigate that realm on our own. We need God to do that, and the only way to connect with Him is thru Jesus. That way, you avoid the traps that other spirits can lead you in, making you believe you found God when you really haven't, or making you believe there is no God at all.

One must therefore leave the mindset of "how can I serve my needs," and instead, adopt the mindset of "how can I serve God". And one must be clear that it is God they want to serve, because it is dangerous to have just a vague "open mind" when stepping into the transcendent. It is easy to fall into delusion about the wrong ideas without the right spirit guiding our spirits, and the only one who can guide us properly is Jesus, since He Himself is God and the link between man and God.

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